The present invention relates to a workflow system for supporting management of implementation of works and the progress state of business composed of a plurality of works on the basis of a process definition which previously defines a flow of business, and more particularly to technique effective for application to a workflow system for supporting management of implementation of works and the progress state of business in consideration of the presence of a stagnated or delayed work in the business, in the workflow management system.
The workflow system is the technique for defining a flow of business composed of a plurality of works as a process definition previously and supporting management of implementation of the works and the progress state of the business on the basis of the process definition. The process definition is said to be a modeled flow of business. Processing in each work is sometimes performed by people and is sometimes executed by a business program automatically. The workflow system performs assignment of works to people and implementation control of processing by the business program to perform the state management and the progress management as the whole business flow.
In such a workflow system, there is a problem that a work is stagnated or delayed when a large quantity of works are assigned to a worker or when a worker is absent. Generally, the stagnated work is assigned to another worker to thereby solve the above problem. Such a solving method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,226, for example. This US patent discloses the workflow system that a stagnation state where a work is stagnated or delayed can be solved by withdrawal and redistribution of stagnated circulating documents.